[rurp]

Is this all that surprising? College admissions are not optimizing for people who can currently pass a tech company interview. Maybe they should focus more in that area, but that's a separate discussion, and currently schools neither select for nor claim to select for those skills.

Plus both processes have immense amounts of variance. It's not hard to find excellent candidates who were rejected from a particular university or job.

[Gunax]

While that's true, there seems to be enough for universities. He has the grades, the SAT, and the extra curriculars.

I feel like we are missing something. Someone with perfect grades, SAT, and leading a competition coding team should get accepted to more schools (many are strong but not name-brand).